We keep hearing in discussions of physics that backward time
travel may be possible. Then we hear that it is not possible.
I do not know which to believe. But from my point of view I am
strongly hoping that we find some good reason that it is
impossible. It is a really frightening concept that backward
time travel might be possible in the near future. Why? Well let
us take an extreme case. Suppose a way to travel backward in time
was discovered and would easily come to fruition in the next ten
years. It is inevitable. Well, we grew up with no time travelers
around. Nobody stepped forward and said that he was a time
traveler. At least nobody sane did. So that means that
civilization never gets to the point where we have backward time
travel. So that means civilization has less than ten years left.
Now that would be a scary thought. [-mrl]

When I was a teenager I read science fiction with its stories
like WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE. In those days it was not quite
respectable to read science fiction. But I thought we really did
live in a world where some of these things really could happen
and by the time I became an adult some of this science fiction
would have become reality and science fiction would be more
respectable. I suppose both have happened but they are not as
tightly bound together as I would have thought. Nobody respects
the old science fiction because of its accuracy. Nobody has come
back to me to say I was right about that science fiction. Yes,
we now accept that when worlds collide it is really, really bad.
And it maybe can happen. In fact, when a world collides with a
piece of stone very much smaller than another world would be,
that can still be a catastrophe. In fact, it can be an
extinction level event.

The real monsters of the past were not the dinosaurs. The
dinosaurs were small and puny. The real monsters of the past
were the great extinctions. And the great extinctions are not
dead. They still hang over us.

With celestial collisions we might be headed for an extinction
level event, but the smart money doesn't bet that way. There are
two reasons for this. One is that the smart money knows that if
there is an extinction level event it won't be around to collect.
That observation is not very comforting. What is a little more
comforting is that celestial collisions are random events that
are no more likely to occur now than they were a millenium ago.
And we got through the last millenium all right. But there are
other extinction events that do not need a collision to create.
With these smaller changes in the environment can lead non-
linearly to very big watersheds that can cause extinction. If we
are going to live to see a major extinction happen--and we will
only see the early parts--it will be this sort of extinction we
will see.

The great extinctions of the past are the subject of UNDER A
GREEN SKY by Peter D. Ward. Ward is primarily a professor of
biology and earth and space sciences at the University of
Washington in Seattle. The subject that fascinates Ward is the
great extinctions of the past. He has specialized in the
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event--the one that supposedly
killed off the dinosaurs. And much of his book is about his work
there. As interesting at that part is, it is really just a long
prolog to the important parts of his book. His real subject is
the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago. In
this event 96% of all known marine species died off. The surface
had it slightly better with only 70% of all vertebrate species
going extinct. And there is no evidence that this, the greatest
of the extinction, was caused by a meteor impact. In fact, Ward
finds chemical evidence that what killed so many species off (and
turned the sky a light shade of green) was a super-abundance of
hydrogen sulfide gas.

What causes so much hydrogen sulfide gas to be created? Well,
the fossil record says that it was anoxic bacteria in deep water.
These are bacteria that, as the name implies, do not need oxygen.
They grow when there is less oxygen in the deep oceans, beating
out the oxygen-needing bacteria. They get their energy
converting sulfur to hydrogen sulfide. It is produced on the
ocean floor and rises to the surface in huge, foul-smelling,
poisonous bubbles of yellow gas. This was what Ward thinks
caused the great extinction at the end of the Permian Age.

Why is there less oxygen in the deep oceans? Where do the deep
oceans get their oxygen? Well, the waters of the ocean flow in a
cycle powered by the heat of the sun. What is deep water in the
more temperate regions is really toward the top in arctic regions
and that is where it gets oxygenated. Life on Earth is very
dependent on that cycle. Interrupting that cycle probably does
not cause the quick freeze that the film THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
suggested. (No, we are not just talking about the Permian-
Triassic extinction here.) It takes longer than a few days and
the results are not as optimistic (?) as that film painted them.
But the film did get one thing right. Global warming for carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere definitely has a big impact on that
cycle of water and can easily redirect it.

Let us get down to some numbers. The change is not linearly
proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. You hit
a point where the flow is disrupted and the deep ocean gets most
of its water from someplace else where there is less oxygenation.
It is a watershed event--no pun intended. You reach a point
where change starts coming very quickly. Carbon dioxide content
is measured in PPM (or parts per million). Ward believes that a
watershed point is estimated at 450 PPM. That is when you start
seeing really major changes in the environment. OK it is not
that simple, but that is where Ward concludes the effect really
starts kicking in. Right now the level is at 360 PPM. That
means we have a margin of 90 PPM. That does not mean we will not
have other very bad things happening at even these levels. It is
suggesting that redirecting the cycle of water will not happen to
a great degree until that point.

The watershed point does seem to depend on other factors also.
There have been times in our planet's past when carbon dioxide
was much higher without causing an extinction, but the mass
extinctions that do not involve impacts have occurred at times of
accelerated growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The
source could be volcanic. That level of 450 PPM is not the
absolute level or even the rate of growth, but they seem to be
correlated to times that the rate of increase is itself
increasing.

As the world industrializes and automobilizes and who knows what
else-izes, the carbon dioxide levels rise about 2 PPM each year.
But the industrialization is increasing as places like India and
particularly China get into the act, it is expected to rise about
4 PPM per year. Remember we have a margin between us and the
cliff of maybe 90 PPM and we lose from that margin maybe 2 PPM a
year. It probably will not hit the environment like the hydrogen
sulfide extinction. That may be up around 1000 PPM, but 450 is
enough to make major changes in the balance of bacteria on the
ocean floor. This is a much more immediate threat than a
celestial collision.

Ward's book goes into possible alternate futures where it is
different levels. I will not go into that here. Right now these
predictions may seem a little science fictional. That is mostly
because they are quite frightening. But we are doing little but
some international wrangling as to who should be cutting back.
That is only natural because nobody wants to be the one to make
the sacrifice. Unfortunately, doing the natural may no longer be
working in unnatural times.

There is an exchange from my favorite science fiction film,
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT:

Professor Bernard Quatermass: The will to survive is an odd
phenomenon. Roney, if we found out our own world was doomed,
say by climatic changes, what would we do about it?

Halloween has changed since I was young. For all its
commercialization even back then, Halloween used to be a local,
contained phenomenon. Young kids went out for an hour or so
after dark, on their own street and that was that. And there was
not all this paranoia about homemade treats and apples.

Now it starts as soon as the kids get home from school (3PM) and
goes until around 9PM, when the six-foot-three high school
seniors (whose idea of costume is face paint) show up. Most of
this is during daylight, even more so this year because we were
still on Daylight Saving Time.

So for six hours one cannot really do anything that does not
allow constant interruptions. Forget trying to read or watch a
movie, but also forget taking a shower, washing dishes, or
anything else requiring a continuous stretch of time. Plus one
has to buy enough candy just in case, and then ends up with
enough to last the rest of the year. (Or one returns it after
Halloween--the size of the return stack of bags of candy at
Costco on November 1 is truly amazing.)

Not to mention that costumes used to be home-made--throw a sheet
over your kid, cut a couple of eye holes in it, and bingo! she's
a ghost. Or put on a white blouse and a toy stethoscope and he's
a doctor. But now if anyone puts on a costume, it is probably
entirely store-bought.

And worst of all none of these kids even know who Bela Lugosi
was.

I cannot solve all these problems, but I have one suggestion.
Townships (and schools) should publicize the notion that a porch
light on means the house is receiving trick-or-treaters, and no
porch light means that they are not. So someone could hand out
candy from 4PM to 5PM, and then turn out the light and sit down
to dinner without interruptions. I figure the chances of this
happening are about zero.

Oh, and make the schools show the original DRACULA as part of
their holiday celebrations. [-ecl]

[Actually I remember my junior high school had a dance with a side
room that showed movies. I remember an abridged version of THE
MUMMY with Boris Karloff. I thought it was great. I had seen the
film before, but it was a hard film to find in those days. Other
kids teased me because I wanted to watch the films and not dance.
Eventually I did get interested in girls (well, a girl) and she
learned to like THE MUMMY as much as I do. -mrl]

That was my first thought as I finished the concluding volume in
the original "Dune" series, started by Frank Herbert back in 1965
with DUNE, one of the all time classic SF novels. This final
novel, SANDWORMS OF DUNE, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J.
Anderson, neatly wraps up the original storyline started by the
elder Herbert all those years ago. And while it's not totally
satisfying, it gets the job done.

SANDWORMS OF DUNE starts off where the previous novel, Hunters of
Dune, left off. The no-ship Ithaca, with its Bene Gesserit
passengers as well as yet another ghola of Duncan Idaho, is still
on the run from the mysterious Ancient Enemy, which we now know
to be the thinking machine fleet, headed by our old friends
Omnious the evermind and Erasmus the shape shifting robot. They
were revealed to be the old couple at the end of CHAPTERHOUSE:
DUNE, Frank's last entry in the series before he passed away.
The other interesting passengers on the no-ship are all the
gholas that the Sisterhood have resurrected from the nullentropy
tube that the last Tleilaxu Master, Scytale, has with him. They
are the gholas of Dune heroes of the past: Paul, Jessica, Alia,
Leto II, Wellington Yueh, Liet-Kynes, and Stilgar, to name more
than a few. The Sisterhood has its reasons for resurrecting
these gholas, as it believes they have a part to play in
Kralizec, the Battle at the end of the Universe that will change
all things. When these gholas have their memories returned, as
Duncan Idaho's ghola did back in DUNE MESSIAH as the character
Hayt, they will be pieces in a complex game that will bring about
a significant change in the structure of the galaxy.

Who else? We have Baron Vladimir Harkonnen--haunted by the
personality of Alia, in a satisfying parallel to Dune Messiah and
Children of Dune where the Baron haunted the Abomination that was
Alia, another ghola of Paul Atreides that the Baron is training
in the Harkonnen ways, and renamed Paolo. Omnious believe Paolo
to potentially be the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, but Omnious also
knows that there is one other out there in the universe that can
also be the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach. He believes that person
is on the no-ship Ithaca, so he is attempting to get the Ithaca
to Synchrony, the home of the thinking machines, to have an epic
showdown between the two. The goal is to control the ultimate
Kwisatz Haderach, and thus be able to rule the galaxy over
humanity.

We have Murbella, the former Honored Matre and now leader of the
Honored Matre/Bene Gesserit group that is trying to defend
Chapterhouse and, ultimately, the entire Old Empire, against the
return of the thinking machines. She enlists the aid of the
Ixians to build her warships and Obliterators to throw against
the thinking machines.

And just what about those new Face Dancers--the ones that can so
perfectly mimic a human being that there appears to be no way to
detect them?

The climax of the novel, of course, is the final conflict between
man and thinking machine. In reality, the resolution is not one
that I'd expected, so I'll give the novel points for that one.
After that conflict, the novel spends some time tying up loose
ends, and in the end it all fits together. It also makes a
fairly decent effort at incorporating all the themes that made
the original DUNE so fascinating --political intrigue,
conspiracies, ecology, etc.

The downside? For starters, there is way too much mention of the
Kwisatz Haderach. By my count, there are as many of four of them
running around the novel. To me, the Kwisatz Haderach was a much
more mysterious entity than is presented here. The whole
wandering of the Jewish people storyline ended way too abruptly,
and without much fanfare. And while this novel rightly keeps its
focus on humanity in the struggle against the thinking machines,
Omnious plays a bit part throughout the whole thing--he seems
more like a doddering old disapproving man who shows a lot of
bluster with facial expressions and verbal blowups than the head
of the thinking machine society that is on its way back to
destroy humanity.

In the end, I think what I will say is that if this is the way
Frank had intended it to end, well, I guess it's okay. I think I
can be satisfied with it. In that regard, it is a decent enough
novel.

The only thing that really bothers me is the potential for
Herbert and Anderson to permanently set up shop in the Dune
universe and just never leave. Yes, I know that the "Heroes of
Dune" series is currently being written (PAUL OF DUNE, JESSICA OF
DUNE, and IRULAN OF DUNE, if you're keeping score at home), but
there are a couple of seemingly throwaway lines near the end of
this novel that have the potential to lead to more books in the
series. Brian and Kevin have done what they set out to do ten
books ago--finish the "Dune" saga. It was nice revisiting the
universe, but it's time to put it to bed. [-jak]

CAPSULE: At first the film AMERICAN GANGSTER seems like an
exciting crime film actually based on true events. Look again
and it is several familiar crime film plots woven together into a
story that is not a lot like the article on which it was based.
Denzel Washington is magnetic, though Russell Crowe does not
quite keep pace. This is an entertaining gangster film, though
little more. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

AMERICAN GANGSTER is a pretty good gangster film supposedly based
on true events. This film chronicles the career of Frank Lucas,
once the heroin baron of Harlem. It is an enjoyable film to
watch and even to see how it resonates with some fictional and
very familiar gangster films. I came out of the film fairly
positive on it until I found the article on which it is based,
"The Return of Superfly", which appeared in "New York" magazine
in August 7, 2000 (see link below). I found most of what was on
the screen was not actually in the article. It is still possible
that events might have happened as occurred, but given director
Ridley Scott's record of historical inaccuracy, I strongly suspect
that is not the case. In fact much of the resonance with familiar
crime films was probably intentional. Stephen Zaillian, who wrote
SCHINDLER'S LIST, had gone downhill a little.

AMERICAN GANGSTER tells of the rise and the fall of gangster and
drug baron Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington). His career
and his relationship to his family could have been borrowed from
the film SCARFACE (actually either version of SCARFACE). He
eventually runs afoul of a special handpicked law enforcement
team, chosen to be incorruptible and (dare I say it?)
untouchable. That team is run by the hard-nosed cop Richie
Roberts (Russell Crowe), a totally honest cop who equally hates
gangsters and cops on the take. Add a little GOODFELLAS, FRENCH
CONNECTION, and even some CATCH ME IF YOU CAN and you have
AMERICAN GANGSTER.

In New York City organized crime Italian-Americans mostly run the
shop. Frank Lucas is just a driver for gangster Bumpy Johnson.
Bumpy trusts his driver and philosophizes on how to be successful
and make real money in the drug business. He might not have been
so open had he known how closely Frank was listening. Bumpy dies
of natural causes and Frank decides to put Bumpy's strategy to
the test. He discovers that even Bumpy probably did not know how
right he was. Frank quickly finds out that with Bumpy's wisdom
he is making lots of money and holding on to it. And he has
ambitions to make even more.

Meanwhile Richie, a pugnacious cop proves he is incredibly
honest, catches the right eye, and is invited to form a special
unit to combat drug dealing in New Jersey. He does not live the
fancy life that Frank does, but he is doing what he wants to be
doing. But he does use his chance to put together a really good
team to go after the drug trade. AMERICAN GANGSTER tells both
stories. And with a running time of 157 minutes it has time to
develop each.

Ridley Scott knows how to direct an entertaining film. Nobody
questions that. He has been doing that for about thirty years
now. However, it is a mistake to assume that his films like
GLADIATOR and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN bear more than a passing
resemblance to actual history. Similarly it would be a mistake
to assume that AMERICAN GANGSTER gets its facts right about
gangland history. Some facts he gets right and some he gets
wrong.

We have heard a lot in films about anti-heroes, heroes with
serious flaws. In a lot of ways Frank is something we do not see
as much outside of Damon Runyon stories. He is an anti-villain.
He is a drug dealer, enslaving some people and killing other with
his product. But he has his own code of ethics. In a curious
way he cherishes his customers, trying to ensure that they really
get the best deal possible on heroin. He protects the integrity
of his brand name. He is very free with unselfish and
intelligent advice to others on how to succeed and what are the
pitfalls of gangster life. He got an education from Bumpy
Johnson and he feels obliged to pass on the benefit of his
learning. In his own way he is a good-guy-bad-guy. Even with
Denzel Washington playing a criminal, he is still playing a
straight arrow.

There is more to enjoy than to admire in the filmcraft of
AMERICAN GANGSTER. This is an entertaining compilation of
retread touches from good gangster films. I give it a high +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

In the 11/02/07 issue of the MT VOID, Mark said in his comments on
travel, "Things break. Things get obsolete and have to be
replaced. ... Experience lasts the rest of your life."

Lax Madapaty responds, "Not just things, experiences can break
down too - memory loss, Alzheimer's and old age ailments... :-)
I like things *and* experiences." [-lm]

And Charles Harris writes, "However, as time goes on, the expected
total return on experience--over the rest of your life--dwindles,
and you begin to anticipate breaking or becoming obsolete yourself
before most of your things." [-csh]

And Mark replies, "I think that is alien to my--well, to my
experience. Just about twenty-five years ago we went to China
rather than buying a nicer car or a better hi-fi system. We saw a
view of China that is no longer possible to see. I have a much
better appreciation of cultures today and how alien they can be
and how similar they can be. I have much more of a context I can
put China and the world into. It changed my political philosophy
irrevocably. Conceivably I have forgotten some of that trip,
though there a trip log helps, but much of that trip I still carry
with me. There have been several times when I was in a debate
with someone else that I wished they could actually have seen what
I have seen rather than assuming they understand the situation
without having been there. From a distance China like Alpha
Centauri can do very little to change your theories of what it is
like. You can only see how it fits into expectations you already
have. You have to be there to see where your expectations were
fundamentally wrong." [-mrl]

I don't know if the "acanthus century plant" was intentionally
fictionalized or a scientific blooper. But I wanted to point out
that within the past few years it made the news here in Los
Angeles when the corpse flower at the Huntington Gardens bloomed--
and that was touted as a "once in a century" event. Which isn't
accurate, but perhaps a comparable news story from way back when
the movie script was written is the ultimate source of a reference
conflating the two ideas. [-mg]

THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD by David Kowalski (ISBN-13
978-1-405-03804-1, ISBN-10 1-405-03804-7) starts out very
promising, with a time traveler going back to the Titanic to try
to save it. What happens, and what happens because of that,
occupies the first hundred pages or so. By that point, we know
what the protagonists are trying to do, but then the book goes
in circles for the next several hundred pages, only really
resuming the plot at the very end of the book. This middle
section does not advance the plot, or give us more interesting
background. Instead, it is standard espionage/stealth operations
stuff. This book would have been much better at half its 750-
page length.

THE GREAT IMPERSONATION by E. Phillips Oppenheim (ISBN-13
978-1-6042-4284-3, ISBN-10 1-6042-4284-1) is considered a classic
spy thriller. Everard Dominey (and Englishman) and Leopold von
Ragastein (a German) were friends at Eton and Oxford who look
almost like identical twins. Later (in 1913) they meet in the
African jungle, Dominey almost dead after being deserted by his
bearers, and just after von Ragastein has been told to return to
England and assume an English identity as a cover for espionage
and fifth column activity. Though the writing is good, it is
alas all too predictable. Of interest only to those who study the
history of the spy novel.

Our science fiction discussion group read THE SPACE MERCHANTS by
Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (ISBN-13 978-0-575-07528-3,
ISBN-10 0-575-07528-7) for October. Though written over a half a
century ago, much of Pohl and Kornbluth projected is
distressingly true today (particularly the aspects of big
corporations' control of government). The book does not appear
dated, except perhaps in the relations between the sexes, and
even there it does have a woman doctor, written when this was not
a commonplace. I can even offer as evidence the agreement of a
high schooler in our group that the book still read well and
understandably as a science fiction book, even though written so
long ago.

The original publication of THE SPACE MERCHANTS was as GRAVY
PLANET serialized in three parts in GALAXY magazine in 1952.
This included a couple of chapters at the end set on Venus, which
seemed to me out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the
novel, and were dropped when the book was published. Also, the
Conservationists were called "Connies" in the serialization, but
"Consies" in the novel, which perhaps make the parallel to
"Commies" a tiny bit more subtle and also makes more sense in
terms of how these nicknames are formed.

THE MERCHANTS' WAR by Frederik Pohl (ISBN-13 978-0-312-90240-7,
ISBN-10 0-312-90240-9) is a 1984 sequel to THE SPACE MERCHANTS by
Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (and not to be confused with the fourth
book of the Charles Stross series). This takes place initially
on Venus, a world populated (at the end of THE SPACE MERCHANTS)
by "Consies" and hence extremely negative towards advertising in
any form. Consider the lengths to which Venerians will go to
avoid the sin of advertising, as evidenced by this sign at
Russian Hills:

"If for any reason you do not want to bring your own refreshments
while visiting Russian Hills, some items like hamburgers, hot
dogs and soy sandwiches are available in the Venera Lounge.
They're inspected by the Planetary Health Service, but the
quality is mediocre. Beer and other drinks can also be
purchased, at about twice the cost of the same things in town."

Compare this to what one finds in James Morrow's 1990 novella
CITY OF TRUTH (ISBN-13 978-0-156-18042-9, ISBN-10 0-156-18042-1):